


This is the way (to breathe)

by Roanoke_Wilde



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Basically I was felled by my feels and I wrote this oops, Complete, Din Djarin Needs a Hug, Din Djarin Removes the Helmet, Din will protect his baby no matter what, Episode: s02e07 The Believer, Family, Gen, HALP ME, Hurt/Comfort, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, ManDadlorian, Mandalorian Season 2: Episode 7 Spoilers, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Moff Gideon is Evil, NOT season 2 episode 16 compliant, No Beta, Oh look now there's TWO parts wha, One Shot, POV Din Djarin, Please don't be too harsh I tried but I'm experimenting with this, Protective Din Djarin, Reaction to Episode 15, Spoilers, The Author Regrets Everything, Whump, Written before season 2 finale, the helmet comes off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:35:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28024068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roanoke_Wilde/pseuds/Roanoke_Wilde
Summary: The way to breathe should be simple: Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.But after losing the kid, Din is not so sure things can ever be that simple again. How can he breathe freely when he doesn't even know that Grogu is still out there, too - living, breathing, waiting? How can he live with himself if he has forever failed to protect the one being he knows without a doubt to be worth every breath he has left to give?(Or a little angsty thought-dive into Din's headspace after episode15 :)
Comments: 51
Kudos: 363





	1. Inhale.

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Иначе нельзя (дышать)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28168773) by [Anka_Anny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anka_Anny/pseuds/Anka_Anny)



* * *

**_Mando'a translations at end._ **

* * *

_Inhale._

_Exhale._

Din puts the stormtrooper helmet on last. He works quickly, stripping himself of his Beskar, opening himself up to the world more and more with every piece he discards in the neat pile beside him.

His breaths are even then.

Air comes in through the familiar filters of his helmet, swells his lungs with life, rushes out again. He is not afraid to remove his helmet—no one is around to see the face he has hidden since he was child. He does not even doubt that swapping his Beskar helmet for the stormtrooper one is the right course of action, a course of action that even the Creed would allow.

That this is a course of action that will lead to Grogu's safe return.

But even so, his hands hesitate, linger over the rim of his helmet as he reaches to take it off. When he lifts it off his head a moment later and places it gently on the ground—

When the stale stormtrooper helmet takes its place—

When the sides of this new helmet press too tightly against his face, constricting his air flow, forcing him to breathe deeper, to pull harder with his lungs—

When what he has chosen to do falls upon him completely—

Din feels as if there is something loose inside of him. Something that tickles the insides of his ribcage, flutters against the walls of his chest alongside every beat of his heart. He ignores it and breathes, as his _buir_ taught him to when he received an injury during combat. He is not injured. Grogu needs him. He will find the kid.

He gathers the armor into a bag, swings it over his shoulder.

He does not falter when his gaze falls upon Cara, upon Mayfeld, upon Boba Fett. What he had done was not a sacrifice, not really. If it meant Grogu would be safe again—

If it meant that the mistakes Din had made would be corrected and that retribution would made—

If it meant that the child would be safe—

Then _nothing_ he could do would be a true sacrifice to Din.

He breathes.

_Inhale._

_Exhale._

* * *

Din knows how to breathe.

He has done it all his life. As he takes the stick from Mayfeld and strides to the Imperial databank, his breathing remains even. His heartbeats do not, however—they gallop inside his chest with painful ferocity, pulsing in his wrists, in his temples and in his neck, in the throb at the tip of each thumb.

He lets the machine scan the helmet, some part of him desperate to cling to the hope that Mayfeld was wrong, that he can slip past the system without removing his helmet.

But it does not accept him, and he does not have time to dwell on his choice.

He takes the helmet off, cool air crashing against his clammy skin with an intensity that he ignores if only because he does not have the strength to do otherwise. He watches the monitor. His breathing is faster now, and there is a tightness in his lungs that was not there before the helmet came off, before he broke the creed, before Imperial eyes became the first to see his face in more years than he cared to count.

But this sacrifice was not really a sacrifice, was it?

The air seems to fight his body as it trickles in through his nose, but finally, _finally_ he has gotten what he needs—what Grogu needs—and he turns away from the databank. The voice stops him.

"Trooper."

Din turns to the voice.

Suddenly, he cannot remember how to breathe.

He does not know how to force air into lungs that are made of concrete, past a heart that tries to tears its way out of his flesh. He cannot remember his _buir's_ words. He only knows that he is choking, suffocating, that he can actually _feel_ the weight of this Imp's gaze on his skin—

And then Mayfeld is there, talking, sparing him, speaking words Din can't afford to even try to understand when he is having a hard enough time just breathing.

The Imperial officer spits out more words Din can't understand even though he can hear them clearer than he ever could through the Beskar of his helmet. The officer yells, too, and while Din tries to react appropriately - to play along with Mayfeld's lies - he thinks he probably fails.

 _Inhale_.

The breath is there, right inside of him even as Din sits at the officer's table. And whatever broke loose earlier that day is there, too. It is more askew than it was then, now intertwining with the curve of his ribs as well as the pit of his stomach. It is penning his breath beneath his bones, inside the cavity of his chest.

All at once, there is blaster fire, bright in Din's eyes, untampered by his helmet, and then Din remembers it all. He remembers how to breathe.

_Exhale._

The adrenaline that surges through his veins, that climbs and twists through his every muscle—it is familiar. He knows adrenaline like he knows no other force in the galaxy, and suddenly he is moving with the same certainty he displayed when he removed his helmet to have his face scanned. He is sprinting without stumbling, life in the air he breathes and in the pounding of the heart within his chest.

He knows this is the way to breathe—to take it one breath at a time, to never dwell too long on the breaths that have passed already, to focus not on the breathing itself but on the goal each breath serves.

_Inhale._

_Exhale._

* * *

Boba Fett's ship is quiet after Din concludes his message.

Din stands in front of the holo projector, chest rising and falling beneath the well-known contours of his Beskar chestplate. He breathes, but something inside of him is terribly different. It is not merely loose now—it is broken.

And it is creeping into his throat, no longer content to be confined to his stomach and heart and lungs and ribs.

When his traveling companions finally break apart, Shand and Fett retreating to the cockpit, Din is left alone with Cara. She is watching him, she can tell. She does not know what he has done. She cannot know, can she?

"Mando?" she says softly.

Din breathes in.

"Are you...OK?"

Din wants to let out a scornful laugh at that, to tell her that he will never be OK until Grogu is in his arms again—until his _foundling,_ his _ad'ika—_ is warbling and giggling and playing with the ball from the _Razor Crest_ (which seems to burn just beneath the pressure of his belt). He wants to explain that everything is different and that he has looked inside his own head and discovered that _he doesn't care_ that it's different—

That given the choice, he would do it all over again, within the span of a heartbeat. He would give up his helmet, his creed, his life, his _soul_ if it meant that he could only have the chance to fulfill the promise he had made.

The promise to keep Grogu safe because the kid would always be more important than Din himself.

But he cannot laugh. Or perhaps he does not dare to for fear that the laughter will morph into something else.

He can barely breathe past the poison in his throat—it took all the air he had left to send his message to Gideon. Now he wants to sleep, to slip into blackness until they arrive at Gideon's doorstep. To avoid confronting the ghosts that he cannot expend energy to fight when Grogu is so near.

"Mando?"

Cara comes closer. She is concerned, but how can he explain to her what ails him when he doesn't understand himself? How can he tell her what it's like to smother in a room full of oxygen?

"The helmet," Din says, and he surprises himself with how steady his voice is. "I took it off in a room full of Imps."

Cara freezes in the spot, eyes searching his helmet. He knows she is thinking back to what he told her before, about never being able to put the helmet back on once it's off. He doesn't know why he told her—it doesn't matter—but now she knows. Now she knows, and the pressure inside of him is no lighter for the revelation. He had been hoping it would be…even if only by a little bit.

"Alright," she says finally. She swallows as she says it, as if she is ingesting something bitter.

Din looks at her, his hands gripping the edge of the table where he recorded the holographic message. She comes within arms' length of him and stares directly into his eyes, searching him, understanding him in a way he doesn't think he understands himself.

"You did what you had to to save the kid, Mando. And no creed is worth preserving over his life. You are…you're a father before you're a Mandalorian now, and that's OK."

It is that last sentence that reminds Din how to do what had become impossible once more—to breathe. He was as Grogu's father. His _buir_.

He has not sacrificed anything, not really.

Din breathes, and it feels like he is waking up. Oxygen pours into him like dawning sunlight pours into night-ravaged skies. The thing that was loose inside of him—the _wrongness_ —fades away. If there is any evidence it was there, the evidence is like a pale scar.

A reminder, but a weakness no longer.

_Inhale._

_Exhale._

* * *

The moment comes all at once.

Din is running, fighting, greeting the red tinge of battle that rises within him like the old friend it is. He fires his blaster at anything in the corridor that moves, following the path that he has carved into his mind—that he has spent hours memorizing. When he blinks, it is engraved on the back of his eyelids.

He reaches the door, and it is open already.

Standing inside the cell is Moff Gideon, the darksaber trailing from his hand. He looks at Din with the hungry expectancy of a lion that has cornered its prey.

In his other hand, he holds what Din wants.

Din's breath seals itself inside his lungs before he can think to force it to escape. Because what he wants is something invaluable, something innocent—Grogu. His _adi'ka_. The one he has come to save no matter the cost. And the little one is hurt. Din can tell even through the halo of unconsciousness that lingers over the child. His blood boils at the sight of the restraints they have clamped over his fragile wrists.

"And we meet again, Din Djarin," the Moff purrs. "I had thought th—"

Just like before, Din does not hesitate when he removes his helmet to let Gideon see the eyes of the one has come to defeat him. He doesn't even feel it—just sets it on the ground with the controlled wariness of a hunter delivering his bounty. The moment it comes off, he remembers.

He remembers, and he is ready.

Gideon is surprised, his mouth open, ready to say the words Din had denied him, but Din never pauses long enough gives him the chance. He sees the child. Grogu is all that matters.

For the first time since his _adi'ka_ was taken, Din can breathe freely.

The air is sweet as it rushes into his lungs, and it fans the flames that his anger and his bloodlust and his fear have been stoking for so long already. Din lunges forward, prepared for whatever may come, prepared to give every breath he has left in defense of the one he has failed.

This - _this_ is the way.

_Inhale._

_Exhale._

* * *

**_Mando'a Translations:_ **

_buir:_ **father** , mother, parent

 _adi'ka:_ little one, **son** , daughter


	2. Exhale.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ok. I knew I said there was only going to be one part to this - and there WAS - but I decided to write a continuation of the first part of this. Maybe it's a little weird and heavy and yes I should be sleeping AGAIN, but AHH. @_@

_Inhale._

Pain flares along every nerve in Din's body, and he can feel hot blood pulsing from the jagged gash in his leg. There is blood in his hair, too, seeping from a laceration at his hairline, and it threatens to trickle in his eyes even as he stands here. He is swaying, trembling, breathing in great gasps—

But he is still breathing—

Grogu is still breathing—

 _Exhale_.

He does not know how he did it or when it happened, but the Moff is dead. Din doesn't even care at this point that he has succeeded because there is only one thing that matters. There is only one way Din will achieve victory today—

If Grogu is breathing and uninjured and safe.

Right now, the baby looks only as if he is sleeping naturally, curled in the nook of Din's good arm. Din knows better, though. Or maybe the little one _is_ conscious—it's hard to tell through his smoky, undulating vision and the way his chest is almost refusing to rise and fall at all.

Din looks down at his feet suddenly, at the man who was responsible for taking his _adi'ka_ , for hurting him. He feels a rush of dark anger sweep through him, wrenching his uneven breaths back, into a tighter hold, but the sudden feeling of Grogu's chest rising sharply beneath Din's hand washes the feeling away just as swiftly as it comes.

The kid is all that matters.

Nothing else can be more important.

He looks down, searching the still green face, hoping to see those dark eyes slip up, gaze into his own. But the kid does not stir beyond a subtle wrinkling of his eyebrows and the tiniest whimper that creeps out with his next exhalation.

Din's anger returns, but he cannot dwell on it any longer.

This place will be crawling with Imps soon. It is a miracle he has not be overrun with them already. He must return to Boba Fett's ship so that they can put as much distance between these splinters of the Empire and themselves as possible. He must return quickly so that Cara and Shand and Fett do not have to fight a battle that is not theirs for any longer, risking their lives for the small being that has so inexplicably become his responsibility.

Din turns toward the door, but for some reason he can no longer see its outline clearly. Something warm and wet touches his eyelash, and he shakes his head, takes a trembling step forward, his grip on the kid in his arms tightening before it can unconsciously loosen.

But he knows what is happening to him—

Gideon was a skilled fighter—

Din tries to fight it with everything he has, but the blood spilling from his veins and the oxygen that will not sustain him and the blackness that will not weaken its grip is more than his unwilling body can deal with.

_Inhale._

_Exhale._

Din twists to the side as he falls, the world spinning away from consciousness like the stars he and the child would watch from the cockpit of the _Razor Crest_. He did not come this far to crush Grogu with his own body. If it is the last thing he does—

If the last breath he has is used to give his _adi'ka_ even one more minute of life—

Then it is the least he can do.

Din does not feel it when he hits the ground, when his head collides with the floor, unhelmeted, unprotected, slick with the blood from his head-wound. The blackness has already claimed him, swept his last thought into oblivion with his consciousness.

_Breathe, adi'ka. For me._

Grogu does not hit the ground. He remains tucked close to Din's side – the Mandalorian's hand still curled around him, tight with a grip that does not relax even in the darkness. The child sleeps on, ears still drooping, eyes still closed, sights he does not understand flashing across the blank surface of his eyelids.

His little chest swells with air, deflates again with a soft breath.

He is getting closer to waking up—Grogu knows this with a certainty that is beyond him. He may be locked inside his own head, unable to see or hear, but he can _feel_. He can feel warmth beside him, familiarity beside him—

He matches his breathing with that of the one who holds him.

 _Inhale_.

Grogu's eyes open slowly. He coos. No one answers.

 _Exhale_.

* * *

Cara does not know what pulls her forward as she runs down this corridor.

It wasn't in the plan they had created. It does not even make sense. She does not know her way around the ship and does not know where the little one is supposed to be kept. But something urges her to come this way, to abandon the post where she was waiting for Mando to appear because he needed her somewhere _else_.

She runs until she sees the stormtrooper.

He is standing in front of an open door, the body of a different trooper laid across his feet as if he has been flung against the adjacent wall. But he is not aiming a blaster or moving forward or even speaking on his comm system—

He is choking, hands scrabbling at his throat, and Cara knows the child is alive, that he is responsible for this, that he is trying to defend himself—

She shoots the stormtrooper and he drops. She sprints forward, jumping over his prone body, and freezes in front of the doorway. She only has time to glance at the situation—at the gleam of Beskar on the floor, smeared with red, at the shaking child propped against his chest—before she feels herself choking.

The breath is being squeezed out of her, her windpipe tight and pliable and sharp in her throat—

"St—stop!" she struggles to speak, hands wrapping around her own throat as if they can ward off the invisible hand crushing it.

She locks her eyes on the child, who looks worse than she has ever seen him. His eyes are half-closed, his tri-fingered hand trembling like the last leaf fixed to a barren branch. Black spots pockmark her vision, leave smears in their wake as they pop and reappear moments later.

Her tongue feels heavy, her jaw unable to move, but she speaks, one last line, a desperate plea, a _breath_ —

"Grogu!"

Mando told her his name, before they set their plan into motion. He told her, and when she uses it, the pressure retreats from her airway immediately. She can breathe, and she sucks in the biggest gulps of air she can, tasting its sweetness, letting the blackness recede.

But she cannot breathe for long because they have to _move_ —they have to get out of here. She has to move the Mandalorian, move the child. She has to make them safe.

She steps forward and kneels at Mando's side, her breaths still hard and harsh in her own ears, and looks down at him, assesses his injuries, does not take the time to dwell on the fact that she is seeing his face—his matted dark hair, the ghost of stubble along his tan jaw, the thin moustache across his upper lip.

"We—we have to move him," Cara pants to the child.

But Grogu does not even coo in response. He is draped across the side of Mando's chestplate, eyes threatening to close completely of their own accord, shaking so violently that Cara is almost afraid he is seizing. She reaches out, her hands hesitating to touch him after the power she has felt take control of her air supply—twice now.

But then she does it anyway, cradles him close to her. She feels tears prick at her vision because suddenly she knows that she will not be able to move the Mandalorian on her own. He is too heavy. He is dead weight.

And even though she sees him breathing— _inhale, exhale, alive_ —she cannot take both him and the child back to Boba Fett's ship. Even if she was willing to leave the child behind, she knows that he would never forgive her for choosing him instead. She has to leave him behind in order to save the one he would give anything to save.

She stands, Grogu in her arms.

Her tears slip down her cheeks even as she hears steps in the hallway, distantly registers the sound of alarms tearing throughout the ship.

"I'm sorry," she chokes, each word a lump she can barely squeeze out of her throat, and then she turns.

Each breath she takes stabs her chest, makes her wince, feel like her heart is bleeding. She reaches the doorway, forcing determination rather than grief to course through her every vein. She knows that if she can only get Grogu back to the ship, where her companions wait, then he will be safe.

She will come back for her friend, when Grogu is hidden and she can return.

She has to, even if it is only to discover his final fate.

But when she turns her back, Grogu stirs and makes a sound.

It is a broken, hoarse sound, but it a sound that unmistakably, _inexplicably_ carries the sound of hope. Or urgency. Of prompting.

Cara stops—

" _Grogu_ ," a familiar voice says, from behind her.

She turns, and Mando is awake, his eyes are open. Brown eyes. Haunted eyes. A gaze that never once leaves the child in her arms.

It is a gaze that is not completely clear of unconsciousness, but he is alive, he is breathing, he is _conscious_. Cara can help him. She can save him _and_ his child. She has to.

"Mando," she breathes.

And then she is at his side, helping lift him to his feet, taking as much weight as she can while keeping her grip on the child. Mando's arm is heavy around her, his feet shuffle, but he holds a blaster ready to fire at any enemy they encounter.

He breathes near her ear, eyes drifting whenever they can to the child she holds close to her body, partially shielded by the way the Mandalorian's body curls into her.

They leave the room, make it down the hall, ready, prepared.

They will give every last breath they have to make it out of here, to get the child to where he belongs, to make right what was made wrong.

_Inhale._

The child drifts back into unconsciousness, and they move faster, knowing it is only a matter of time before Mando drifts away again, too.

 _Exhale_.

* * *

Din wakes with a name on his lips.

"Grogu!"

_Adi'ka!_

His eyes snap open, and light stabs them until he is blinking and shaking his head and fighting the weight that pushes his eyelids down again because he knows that if does not fight it will be too long until they open once more.

He has to know where Grogu is. He has to know if his _adi'ka_ is alive.

He has not breathed his last breath, which means that he has failed if Grogu is still on the Imperial ship or if—

A coo.

A soft breath on his skin.

Three gentle fingers that rest upon his jaw, trail up to his cheek.

The sight of two large dark eyes peering down into his own, framed by wrinkled cheeks and sprigs of wiry hair. A face that is somehow cute even though it would seem ugly on any other creature.

 _Grogu_.

The panic rushes out of Din with a single breath, a single _exhale_ that feels like the relief of waking from a nightmare or the soothing coolness of a bacta patch on a wound. He smiles, and there is something warm in his eyes—

It is not blood this time.

It is relief. Relief in the form of tears. Of water. Of oxygen and hydrogen and salt.

" _Adi'ka_ ," Din whispers. He cannot lift his head yet because he knows that the strength is not there, but he will be ready when the time comes for him to do so. "I am sorry, _adi'ka_."

The child coos, and in his eyes is something Din will never forget. A trust. A brokenness. A love. A hesitancy.

It is all of these things, and Din watches as the infant explores Din's exposed face with probing fingers, with a deliberateness that he has seldom seen in the little one's actions. He waits until Grogu is finished absorbing his _buir's_ face, and then he leans back, out of Din's range of vision.

Din breathes in.

He lifts himself up into a sitting position.

He fights the boiling darkness.

And he wins.

He is in Fett's ship, down in its belly. There are bandages and supplies strewn across the light floor, blood on the wide table he now sits on—the table where the holograph had been recorded—the remains of a frantic rush to stabilize him once Cara got them off the Imperial ship. Din barely remembers what happened after he woke and saw that Grogu was with Cara.

But Din's eyes are drawn first to where Grogu perches on Din's lap, looking at him expectantly, ears lifted, head cocked.

"Unh?" the child coos.

Din smiles.

He breathes.

_Inhale._

Grogu is safe. He is alive. Gideon is dead. The galaxy breathes around them, brimming with opportunities and hope and futures and with the knowledge that Din has not failed this time. He has rescued his little one, his _adi'ka_. What was wrong has been made right, and Din can face whatever comes next.

He will not let the little one go. Not again—not ever.

 _Exhale_.

He should have done this a long time ago, when he first rescued the child from his Din's own mistakes. He should have done this before the child was taken, before he had to pledge his dying breath to the one he had wronged.

" _Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad._ ," Din says.

The child watches him, and then reaches a single hand toward his _buir's_ face, as if he senses the importance of what Din has never dared to say before. He probably _does_ sense it. The Mandalorian smiles at him, takes Grogu up in both hands and lifts him to his face so the child can touch it. Din sucks in a deep breath.

 _I know your name as my child_.

That's what he had said in Mando'a. The vow of adoption. The vow that has made uneasiness roll in Din's gut every time he has thought about it—

That has reminded him of when he was a child, of his _buir_ —

The vow that has been in his head ever since he first saw Grogu and the vow that he has been so unsure of, so afraid of, so uncomfortable with—until now.

"This is the way," he murmurs. "This is the way to breathe, _adi'ka_. To give your every breath to another."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHHHHH. I couldn't help it - everyone's lovely support has given me a writer's high, and the feels from that last episode were still so intense that I went ahead and wrote a second part to this. I've really liked this style of writing - fragmented and not grammatically correct but raw and (hopefully) compelling - and I most likely went way overbroad and wrote 2,500 words worth of crap BUT I WROTE AND IT WAS FUN.
> 
> I hope you guys liked this second installment. It wasn't planned - but maybe it's worth something. I'm way too obsessed, guys. Help me. XD
> 
> ~Roanoke  
> (Romans 3:25)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so. I wrote this thing. Because I have no self-control and I'm experimenting with writing styles and HALP and also the FEELS for that episode. @_@
> 
> I wrote this in a single sitting when I should have been sleeping, so please keep that in mind XD Hope you enjoy it anyway, though! I had to share the EmOtIoNs.
> 
> Thanks for reading.
> 
> -Roanoke  
> (2nd Corinthians 6:18)


End file.
